DE PALMA SAYS HE TURNED DOWN HITCHCOCK BIOPICS"WE SHOULD LEAVE THE MAN ALONE"This interview is two months old, but it was kind of skipped over with all of the Passion news going on at the time. Actually, at the time, I had tried to embed the video interview to the De Palma a la Mod blog, but the embed code wouldn't work for some reason. (Update-- Go to the comments section below to see the embedded video, thanks to Rado!) MTV's Kevin P. Sullivan talked to Brian De Palma at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and De Palma told him that he was considered as director for two Alfred Hitchcock biopics that have appeared this year: The Girl, directed by Julian Jarrold, which premiered on HBO last month; and Hitchcock, directed by Sacha Gervasi, which hits theaters this week. The former puts a close-up on the relationship between Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren, who starred in Hitchcock's The Birds and Marnie. The latter, written by John J. McLaughlin (who had for a time worked on the screenplay to Parker with De Palma before that project was taken on by Taylor Hackford) looks at the making of Hitchcock's Psycho.

"They were all sent to me," De Palma told Sullivan, "so I know exactly what they're all about. I was the top of the list." De Palma, however, turned these projects down. "We should leave the man alone," he told Sullivan. "He's a great master, and these are kind of disturbing views of him and making these movies."

After a private screening of HBO's "The Girl" held for Tippi Hedren, her friends and family, including daughter Melanie Griffith, the reaction was silence.

Make that stunned silence, as the room took in the film's depiction of a scorned, vindictive Alfred Hitchcock physically and emotionally abusing Hedren during production of "The Birds."

"I've never been in a screening room where nobody moved, nobody said anything," Hedren recounted. "Until my daughter jumped up and said, `Well, now I have to go back into therapy.'"

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TIPPI TIMES THREEIncidentally, Tippi Hedron portrayed the mother of Melanie Griffith's character on the season premiere of FOX-TV's Raising Hope last month-- and if you'd kept the channel tuned for the program after that, you would have seen Griffith's daughter Dakota Johnson starring in the new show Ben and Kate.

'CAPONE RISING' LANGUISHING IN DEVELOPMENTAlso in the MTV interview, Sullivan asked De Palma about the Untouchables prequel, Capone Rising. "It's quite a good script," De Palma told Sullivan, "but it's owned by Paramount. We had it together with different casts at different times, but it never seemed to work out. It's still there. I've always been amazed to think about how many scripts are sitting in studio vaults that are actually great scripts, that if anybody would go down and read them, they would be amazed at what's there. There must be tons of them."

Back on September 13, De Palma was asked about the prequel by Collider's Phil Brown. "I don’t know," De Palma said regarding whether the film will ever happen. "We’ve had it cast many times, but we’ve just never been able to get everything together at the same time. It’s owned by Paramount so there’s nothing I can do." When asked who he'd planned to cast in it, De Palma replied, "At one point I think I had Nicolas Cage playing Capone. Gerald Butler was going to do the Sean Connery part. I think we even had Benicio Del Toro as Capone at one point. We had so many great people attached. It’s one of those legendarily great scripts that actors would die to play, but we’ve just never been able to get it all together with Paramount."

Very interesting video over at MTV.. Seems it isn't all bad for Brian, as it apears he is still getting offered movies, although the same old stuff that he apparently doesn't want to do (gangster-movies, bloody thrillers).

It would be great if you guys joined the discussion of DePalma's past, present and future here: http://depalma.freeforums.net/index.cgi?board=general

That way the discussions will not be lost and can go on for years.. ..